1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the field of storing cryptocurrency in a collectable sealed object.
2. Description of Related Art
The closest related invention is a piggy bank. Piggy banks are typically made of ceramic or porcelain. They are generally painted and serve as a pedagogical device to teach the rudiments of thrift and savings to children; money can be easily inserted and removed. Many piggy banks have a rubber plug located on the underside; others are made of vinyl and have a removable nose for easy coin access. Many are not shaped like a pig and some incorporate electronic systems that calculate the amount of money deposited. Books, film, and other dramas often portray piggy banks that have no opening besides the slot for inserting. A character is shown smashing the ceramic bank. It shows how earnest the character is, that they are willing to destroy the bank forever to use the funds.
As a method of retaining fiat money and educating consumers about the rudiments of thrift and saving the piggy bank suffers from few major flaws. Fiat money typically suffers from inflation and the value of that money becomes less over time than when it was first deposited; thus, a dollar saved today will only be worth less than a dollar when it is retrieved. There is no indication of when the funds are deposited, or their current value in relation to when they where deposited. Additionally, there is no way of easily determining the amount of money present in a piggy bank by looking at the piggy bank unless there is some sort of digital display.
The second field of art the current invention relates to is cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a digital medium of exchange. The first cryptocurrency to gain significant market share in trading was Bitcoin in 2009, since then numerous cryptocurrencies have become available. Cryptocurrencies are at bottom specifications regarding the use of currency that seek to incorporate principles of cryptography to implement a distributed, decentralized, and secure information economy. When comparing cryptocurrencies to fiat money, the most notable difference is in how no group or individual may gain any significant control over the production of money, instead only a certain amount of cryptocurrency can possibly be produced by the entire cryptocurrency system collectively, at a rate which is always both prior defined and publicly known.
Currently there are coins that have stickers on the sides of them that display the number of Bitcoins in an account revealed on the inside of the sticker. These coins are not a safe vessel for the storage of Bitcoins as the sticker can easily be removed and in some cases the Bitcoins can be transferred and the sticker re-applied to the coin. There are no products on the market that combine the physical characteristics of a piggybank like object with the storage of Bitcoins.